60 billion planets could host alien life or could be located within a star’s habitable zone within the Milky Way galaxy alone, a study said this week.
Researchers used data taken from NASA’s Kelper spacecraft, which is tasked with hunting exoplanets, finding that there should be at least one planet around the size of Earth in the habitable zone around each red dwarf star. Red dwarves are the most common type of star in the Milky Way.
Nicolas Cowan, with Northwestern’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics, noted that the majority of planets in the Milky Way orbit around red dwarves.
“A thermostat that makes such planets more clement means we don’t have to look as far to find a habitable planet,” he said in a news release from the University of Chicago.
The study appears in the “Astrophysical Journal Letters” journal.
“Clouds cause warming, and they cause cooling on Earth,” study researcher Dorian Abbot, with University of Chicago, said in a statement in the release. “They reflect sunlight to cool things off, and they absorb infrared radiation from the surface to make a greenhouse effect. That’s part of what keeps the planet warm enough to sustain life.”
Only around a dozen habitable planets have been discovered so far.
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